Learners’ Awareness and Perceived Use of Metacognitive Online Reading Strategies among Malaysian ESL University Students
Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia
ABSTRACT
Some ESL learners are not aware of the importance of reading strategies to comprehend a text. Due to this, reading a text becomes challenging especially so, if it is an academic text. This study explores the level of awareness and perceived use of online reading strategies of university students when they read English academic texts online. A total of 109 respondents who took English for Technical Communication, a required English level 2 course in a higher institution in the East Coast of Malaysia were involved in the study. A 38-item, self-report inventory by Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) called On-line Survey of Reading Strategies (OSOR) was used to gather data. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Some respondents were also interviewed to obtain information on the importance of reading strategies to ESL learners. Results indicated that these respondents believe that problem-solving reading strategies are more useful than global and support strategies especially in reading academic texts online.
KEYWORDS
ESL, Online Reading Strategies, Metacognitive Online Reading Strategies, OSOR